There’s no funding for the fence, which will take years to build if it ever does get funded. There are so many other immediate reforms that could have been adopted this year that would have strengthened immigration enforcement, closed deportation loopholes immediately, and provided true relief at the border. (And don’t even get me started on this administration’s renewed laxity at the front door, which has been thrown open to tens of thousands of new Saudi student visa holders while enforcement against millions of current visa overstayers remain virtually non-existent.)

The United States will miss its deadline to complete a security fence along the Mexican border this year, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Thursday.

“I don’t think we’re going to hit the nail on the head and be done by the end of the year,” Chertoff told Reuters, adding that about 370 miles of the planned 670-mile (1,070-km) fence had been completed.

Chertoff said he hoped when the Bush administration leaves office in January about 90 to 95 percent of the fence — a controversial measure that has raised hackles both with Mexico and with U.S. landowners along the proposed route — would be completed or under construction.

“We’ve gotten most of the way there. We will be very substantially close,” he told Reuters in an interview.